Cakelaw's Travel Tales

This weekend, I visited the Edith Head & Hollywood Exhibition at Bendigo.  Edith Head was a famous Hollywood costume designer who designed costumes for old Hollywood.  She originally got the job without formal training by submitting sketches from her school students.  However, Edith soon proved she was worthy of the appointment, and she went on to dress many leading ladies and gents. Edith herself dressed in a signature style her whole life, including the round glasses that were tools of the trade and her distinctive helmet hair do.  She made her own clothes on shades of beige, black, white and brown  so that she did not upstage the stars.  The exhibition features original sketches, costumes, photos and film.  A great example is the trilogy below featuring a black evening gown worn by Natalie Wood as Maggie in The Great Race : Many of the costumes featured either photos of the costumes on the actresses and actors next...

I recently visited Night Life - A Fashion Exhibition of the 1920s and 30s at Ripponlea House in Elsternwick.  I just adore clothes from this era, so I was so excited to hear about this exhibition, which features clothes worn by Melburnians during the 1920s and 30s.  As the title of the exhibition suggests, it is all about eveningwear.  For this reason, Ripponlea House was darkened inside, with the windows covered over to create darkness and shadows to show off the fashion as it was meant  to be seen.  One of the early explanatory cards stated that it was actually frowned upon to wear sparkly clothes in the daytime at that time.  The exhibition begins in the drawing room with 1920s eveningwear, and there are sparkles, bugle beads and tabers aplenty:  In the next room were lots of accessories, including some very beautiful shoes: I did the rooms a little out of order, and the next room I viewed featured 1930s eveningwear....